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Friday, September 9, 2011

Ten Years Later: 9/11 And The Freedom Agenda

By Amir Taheri

Sunday
marks the 10th anniversary of the triple terrorist raids against the United
States, dramatically symbolised by the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York.

Ten
years after the event, people are still debating its ideological provenance. To
those who have made a career of blaming every evil on Islam, the 9/11 tragedy
was the inevitable fruit of its’ authors’ faith. To others, the raids might
appear more Nietzschean than Islamic: the fruit of hubris and the cult of
action.

The
best one could do is to assess the consequences of the attack in terms of the
aims claimed by its authors.

At
the time, Al Qaeda presented 9/11 as the second stage of a strategy that, so it
claimed, had destroyed one of the two “superpowers” of the modern world, the
Soviet Union. In that second stage, it was the turn of the United States, the
remaining “superpower”, to collapse.

That
has not happened and looks unlikely to happen anytime soon.

If
anything, 9/11 boosted the sense of patriotism among most Americans in the same
way that the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor did six decades earlier. In other
words, what does not kill me makes me stronger.

Like
other nations, America is sustained by common memories, both joyful and tragic.
For most Americans, the 9/11 tragedy remains a deep wound. But it is also a
powerful addition to the common memories of American nationhood.

More
specifically, the terrorists cited five objectives.

The
first was to trigger a series of attacks in “Infidel” countries, to keep the
flames of “global jihad” alive. That didn’t happen. Despite attacks in Bali,
Madrid, Mumbai and London, the promised “endless explosions” did not
materialise.

The
second was to terminate the United States’ military presence in Muslim
countries.

That
didn’t happen either. In 2001, there were around 5,000 American military
personnel in the Greater Middle East, an arc of instability spanning from North
Africa to south-west Asia. Ten years later, and despite massive troop withdrawals
from Iraq, US military personnel in the region number around 150,000. Today,
there are American “military facilities”, a euphemism for bases, in 30 Muslim
countries - an all-time record - whilst 7 Muslim countries have signed
cooperation accords with NATO.

The
third objective was to end US support for regimes in several Arab countries.
The terrorists’ hope was that the withdrawal of US support would pave the way
for them.

In
the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the US did review its 60-year-old policy of
backing the status quo in the region. The Bush administration saw the Middle
East as “a swamp of tyranny that had become a breeding ground for the
mosquitoes of terror”.

Changes
in American policy produced an effect opposite to that expected by Al Qaeda.

Despotic
regimes were shaken; some even collapsed. However, «pure jihadists» did not
take their place.

The
so-called Freedom Agenda, unveiled in Washington in 2003, helped create space
for a variety of forces, including non-violent Islamic groups, thus giving
Arabs a wider political choice. (I also believe that the popular uprising of
2009 in Iran has mortally wounded the Khomeinist regime.)

The
fourth objective was to provoke a global “clash of civilisations” in which, so
they hoped, the “downtrodden” of the Third World would side with the
terrorists.

That,
too, has not happened. Today, outside a conference or two sponsored by the
mullahs of Tehran, talk of “clash of civilisations”, so fashionable a decade
ago, is seldom heard anywhere.

The
fifth objective was to launch a global recruitment drive to produce a new
generation of terrorists.

The
generation of “mosquitoes” bred in and around the Afghan conflict of the 1980s,
consists of men heading for retirement age. Many key members of that generation
have perished in the post-9/11 US intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq. Today,
of the 30 or so “brethren” who formed the high command of Al Qaeda, fewer than
five are still alive and free, though in hiding. The rest are either dead or in
Guantanamo Bay. The hoped-for new generation has failed to emerge.

In
many Arab countries, Al Qaeda has all but disappeared for want of new recruits.

Far
from enthusing Muslims to rush to arms in a new round of “global war against
the Infidel”, the 9/11 attacks have produced a slow but growing sense of
revulsion against terrorism throughout Muslim countries.

Late
in the day, Al Qaeda tried to appeal to radical Palestinians by calling for the
elimination of Israel. However, that tactic also failed. Apart from a few
desperados of Palestinian origin who fought, and died, in Iraq, Al Qaeda has
failed to attract Palestinian recruits.

Some
armed groups, a mixture of bandits and holy-warriors, use the Al Qaeda label,
now without a credible claimant, to win a measure of illusionary legitimacy. We
find them in several of the poorest mini-states of West Africa as well as in
the Shabab (Youth) gang in Somalia. An Algerian terrorist group also used the Al
Qaeda label for a while before discarding it.

To
be sure, there are several armed conflicts involving Muslims. Despite brutal
repression Chechnya is not yet “pacified”. Chinese policy in East Turkistan
(Xingjiang) is still breeding violence. Muslim minorities in The Philippines
and Thailand remain restive.

In
Afghanistan, a moribund Taliban is still causing death and destruction in a few
provinces. And in Pakistan, various terrorist groups remain active in and
around Swat.

However,
none of those conflicts, and other similar ones, could be related to the
strategy that produced the 9/11 attacks against the United States.

Unable
to recruit in the Muslim world, the barons of Salafist terror are focusing on
Muslim minorities in the West. In the past decade, over 800 self-styled
“warriors” with Western European passports have been captured in Afghanistan
alone. Those monitoring the terrorist presence in cyberspace know that whatever
is left of the show is now run by Muslims, including converts, from Europe and
the United States.

This
westernisation of the “jihadist” propagandists emphasises the increasing
irrelevance of “the cause” to the lives of real people across the Muslim world.

-This commentary was published in Asharq al-Awsat on 09/09/2011
-Amir Taheri was born in Ahvaz, southwest Iran, and educated in Tehran, London
and Paris. He was Executive Editor-in-Chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran
(1972-79). In 1980-84, he was Middle East Editor for the Sunday Times. In
1984-92, he served as member of the Executive Board of the International Press
Institute (IPI)

About Me

I graduated from the French University in Beirut (St Joseph) specialising in Political and Economic Sciences. I started my working life in 1973 as a reporter and journalist for the pan-Arab magazine “Al-Hawadess” in Lebanon later becoming its Washington, D.C. correspondent. I subsequently moved to London in 1979 joining “Al-Majallah” magazine as its Deputy Managing Editor. In 1984 joined “Assayad” magazine in London initially as its Managing Editor and later as Editor-in-Chief. Following this, in 1990 I joined “Al-Wasat” magazine (part of the Dar-Al-Hayat Group) in London as a Managing Editor. In 2011 I became the Editor-In-Chief of Miraat el-Khaleej (Gulf Mirror). In July 2012 I became the Chairman of The Board of Asswak Al-Arab Publishing Ltd in UK and the Editor In Chief of its first Publication "Asswak Al-Arab" Magazine (Arab Markets Magazine) (www.asswak-alarab.com).

I have already authored five books. The first “The Tears of the Horizon” is a love story. The second “The Winter of Discontent in The Gulf” (1991) focuses on the first Gulf war sparked by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. His third book is entitled “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: From Balfour Promise to Bush Declaration: The Complications and the Road to a Lasting Peace” (March 2008). The fourth book is titled “How Iran Plans to Fight America and Dominate the Middle East” (October 2008) And the fifth and the most recent is titled "JIHAD'S NEW HEARTLANDS: Why The West Has Failed To Contain Islamic Fundamentalism" (May 2011).

Furthermore, I wrote the memoirs of national security advisor to US President Ronald Reagan, Mr Robert McFarlane, serializing them in “Al-Wasat” magazine over 14 episodes in 1992.

Over the years, I have interviewed and met several world leaders such as American President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Margaret Thacher, Late King Hassan II of Morocco, Late King Hussein of Jordan,Tunisian President Zein El-Abedine Bin Ali, Lybian Leader Moammar Al-Quadhafi,President Amine Gemayel of Lebanon,late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, Late Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat, Haitian President Jean Claude Duvalier, Late United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan,Algerian President Shazli Bin Jdid, Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Siyagha and more...